May 18, 2018

Subscribe

A drone made out of pizza? This YouTuber shows you just how to dough it

by John_A

How do you like your drones: Fixed-wing or multirotor? Civilian or military? Thin-crust or Chicago-style? That’s the question you’ll be asking yourself after a new video from unmanned aerial vehicle-centric Spanish YouTubers deDrones. Cutting out the unnecessary extra step between drones that deliver food and, well, the food itself, they recently set out to create a drone made out of pizza.

“I did it more than anything to entertain my YouTube audience,” deDrones creator Eric Ponce Rodríguez told Digital Trends. “On my channel, I have a section called ‘rare drones,’ which consists of trying to fly drones that are a bit out of the ordinary. In this case, I made a pizza and tried to make it fly. To do this, I baked the base of the pizza to be very hard, and then added all the components of a normal racing drone: Motors, ESCs (electronic speed controls), flight controller, propellers, camera, and a battery. Once I finished, I started to add cheese, pepperoni and green pepper as if it were a real pizza.”

Rodríguez said that he was interested in the challenge of whether such an unwieldy and impractical drone could ever fly. In the end, he was satisfied that a strong enough frame could indeed be created out of pizza dough. Not that it was easy to pilot.

“It was really difficult. The motors were placed as well as I could on a pizza, but the drone was vibrating a lot, and after I tried to make a roll, one arm broke and the drone fell to the ground.” In an attempt to make piloting it as easy as possible, Rodríguez used the camera to create what is surely another world first: The first flying pizza to be piloted using first-person-view goggles.

As Rodriguez noted, this isn’t the first unusual drone he’s created. His previous innovative creations have included a 3D-printed drone, a drone made out of a CD-ROM, and a cardboard drone. He told us that he also has “very good ideas” for other original drone concepts planned for the near future.

As for the million-dollar question of whether he got to tuck into his delicious drone creation? “It’s a good question,” he laughed. “My idea was to eat the drone after the maiden flight, but this was impossible because the drone was broken in 100 pieces. I had to make a replica — and yes, I ate that one!”

Editors’ Recommendations

Do more with your drone: 5 things you can do with a UAV (aside from taking pics)

Take to the skies with the best drones under $500

Wish you could fly? Here are the best drones on the market right now

Switzerland’s new air traffic control system to put drones, planes in same skies